DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Abstract) Urban minority women are currently among the fastest growing populations with HIV/AIDS in the nation. The vast majority of cumulative female AIDS cases are African-American (56 percent) or Latina (20 percent), living in inner city communities with high rates of substance abuse. This application seeks funding to establish a Social Work Research Development (SWRD) Program at the Columbia University School of Social Work (CUSSW) to develop the social work profession's capacity to conduct intervention research on HIV and other STDs among drug-involved women, their sex partners, and their children. The Social Intervention Group (SIG) at CUSSW in collaboration with the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, and several other Columbia University research centers, National Development and Research Institutes, Inc., state authorities and community-based service agencies, proposes to establish a SWRD Program in order to train junior social work faculty in research on the overlapping issues of HIV and substance abuse among women, their main partners, and their children. Our strategic plan to enhance faculty research includes: 1) developing structured mentorship relationships for junior faculty; 2) facilitating pilot studies and grant proposals; 3) providing access to expert scientific consultations; 4) establishing ongoing seminars and scientific work-groups; 5) providing administrative, technical, and clerical support; 6) promoting meaningful, multidisciplinary collaborations with other research centers and 7) facilitating dissemination and diffusion of findings to providers, policy makers, students, and consumers. To establish an enduring infrastructure for faculty substance abuse research, the SWRD program will create: a) an Executive Board to direct the proposed SWRD program, b) a scientific advisory board, c) a panel of mentors, d) a research resources unit, e) a panel of scientific consultants, and f) a community collaborators board. In addition to increasing the number of social work faculty and graduate students, who are trained in substance abuse research, the SWRD program aims to promote high quality, interdisciplinary research, which will advance the design of theoretically sound, contextually specific HIV interventions for different populations of drug-involved women and enhance knowledge and strategies for maintaining behavioral change as well as for diffusing HIV and relapse prevention interventions into communities. The SWRD Program will be directed by Dr. Nabila El-Bassel and co-directed by Drs. Steven Schinke and Mary McKay, all CUSSW faculty with strong programs of federally funded research related to substance abuse and HIV.